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Welcome to CycloneFanatic.com. I notice you haven't taken the time to register yet, now is as good of time as any:)

Need some ebay advice

I purchased a DVD of an older movie as a gift for a relative. I naturally expected an original movie, but what I got was an obviously bootlegged copy, and a bad one at that. The DVD itself was a DVD-R obviously printed with an inkjet printer, as was the DVD cover. The DVD itself also refuses to play in some DVD players, and has problems with DVD players that will play it.

I sent a message to the person I purchased the movie from, who replied by first insisting that it was not a "bootleg", then admitting that it was by saying "We transfer it from our personal 16mm print of this movie." As far as I know copyright law, if you own a copy of a movie in, say, 16mm, you can transfer a copy of that movie to, say, DVD for your own use, but it would be illegal to sell that copy.

I filed negative feedback against this individual, naturally, but then he or she filed negative feedback against me. I had never filed negative feedback against someone on ebay before, so I discovered that this is a common blackmail trick to get you to withdraw the negative feedback. I am refusing to withdraw the negative feedback I filed, but to do so I am having to sacrifice my own ebay rating a bit. I have actually gotten a couple of messages from other people on ebay thanking me for doing this, but nonetheless this is something that I really shouldn't have to do.

I sent a message to ebay notifying them about this, but so far all I got back was an automated reply. I am keeping the bootleg copy of the movie, to keep my options open. I really don't know what to do at this point. I'd like to file copyright violation charges against this person, but I wouldn't know how to do that.

Any advice would be appreciated. I have a feeling that this person has formed a whole ebay business around copying movies from older formats like 16mm and selling the cheap copies. I'd like to see that shut down.

Re: Need some ebay advice

As for your purchase you may just have to deal with the lost of money you gave for the movie. But Ebay will definitely get back to you. They will more than likely suspend the person from using ebay or they may even total ban him.

My brothers in-laws had a scam put on them. They purchased a digital camera and the people used the box of the camera but put rocks in the box to make it feel like they got something. They did report these people to ebay and they actually got banned from using ebay again.

Re: Need some ebay advice

If you did pay by paypal you are insured...up to like $2000 or something like that...if you dispute a claim on eBay they will almost always send you to Paypal just because they are very good at dispute claims. If you escalate it to a Paypal dispute the seller has 30 days to rectify his/her mistake otherwise Paypal will give you your money back and go after them. As for the illegal bootlegged copy, im not saying I don't do it, but I certainly don't sell them on eBay. Thats really gutsy for them to do, and if they are that stupid they diserve to get caught. Good job on standing up for what you know is right by the way!!!

Re: Need some ebay advice

I got burnt by a guy selling a Dyson vacuum. I paid for the vacuum using Paypal..but never got the vacuum. The guy had a perfect feedback rating too. It took a while..somthing like 2 months..but I finally got my money back from Paypal. I still email the guy just to be a pain in the butt!!

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